After having performed alloy many times with Kyle, we decided to record a whole album of just feedback cymbal + saxophone multiphonics. Track 1 from alloy: Your browser does not support the audio element. see the code referenced below. Multiphonic Similarity Lookup The main technological idea behind the album was to use a system that would analyze the “pitch class content” of the feedback cymbal in real-time, find the saxophone multiphonic with the most similar pitch class content, and display it to the saxophonist to perform, (perhaps) blending harmonically with the cymbal (I say perhaps because the microtonality of the cymbal and multiphonics makes for some juicy proximities).

published May 15, 2025 In spring of 2024 I was asked to present saccades in the Allosphere: a three-story, 360 degree video sphere with 54 channel surround sound at UC Santa Barbara. The audience watches from a bridge that goes directly through the middle of the sphere. My saxophone-playing collaborator Kyle Hutchins was doing a west coast tour and though it would be cool to bring saccades to this very tech-forward space.

nand was premiered by the Splice Ensemble at their 2023 Splice Festival in Boston. nand is based on the timbre and rhythmic gating of the NAND-gate feedback circuit described by Nick Collins in Handmade Electronic Music. Even though the system is quite simple (producing repeating phrases consisting of square waves, filtered noise, and silence), each gesture has microvariations that increase the entropy and attract my attention endlessly. My favorite timbres from this circuit occur while parameters are being changed–when capacitors are firing at surprising times, before they can settle into a stasis.

Read DigiScore’s analysis of fold fold was commissioned to reflect the theme of “Location Sharing” for the 2023 Browser Sound Festival in Stuttgart. The ensemble in residence for the festival was a pianist who is in the room during the performance and a saxophonist and bass clarinetist who are remote (as in, in other countries). I chose to reflect the theme of “location sharing” by using audio feedback to “sound out” the resonant frequencies of the remote performers’ locations.

A “saccade” is a rapid movement of the eyeball between two fixed focal points. During this brief moment, the brain hides this blurry motion from our perception. Once a saccade motion has begun, the destination cannot change, meaning that if the target of focus disappears the viewer won’t know until the saccade completes. If the field of vision is changing too quickly, the saccades may never be able to arrive at and focus on a target, instead, the objects in view are only perceived through peripheral vision.

published May 17, 2025 My composition hollow, includes large PVC tubes that are used in a complex audio feedback system. The three tubes (all four inches in diameter) are cut to lengths of 10 feet, 8.4 feet, and 7.5 feet in order to achieve resonances at 55.8 Hz (~A1), 66.3 Hz (~C2), and 74.4 Hz (~D2) respectively. A recording of a performance of hollow was used as the tape part in the fifth movement of arco.

shadow exists as both a solo version for no-input mixer and lights (performed at Omaha Under the Radar in 2018) and as a duo with saxophone. In this video, shadow was played as one movement of a longer performance on the Frequency Series at Constellation in Chicago. The sounds of the no-input mixer are analyzed in real-time using timbral descriptors, which are then sent to a neural network for classification into one of four categories: distorted noise, high squeal, low impulses, or quiet sustained noise.

hollow was created in collaboration with saxophonist Kyle Hutchins and is featured on Binary Canary’s album iterative systems out on Carrier Records. Three large PVC tubes (4 inches in diameter and between 7 and 10 feet long–they can be seen in the video) are amplified by placing a microphone on one end and a speaker on the other. The feedback this creates is stable only at the resonant frequencies of the tube.

feed was created in collaboration with bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward for Experimental Sound Studio’s Oscillation Series. feed integrates multiple modes of real-time lighting control using custom tools that implement DMX parameterization, machine learning, music information retrieval, and Reaper sequencer integration. My DMX parameter control system is a family of OOP classes written in SuperCollider that can be implemented with any DMX compatible lights. It allows for user-defined parameter naming and contains built-in timed fades, LFO modulation, control bus following (for audio reactivity), and user-defined function control of individual parameters.

The spatialized sounds used were designed using custom spatialization algorithms (tuned to the space) and custom sound design software created in SuperCollider. The DMX lights were composed and sequenced using a custom protocol between Reaper and SuperCollider. This is a stereo mixdown.

live performance recorded on April 5, 2018 by Spektral Quartet University of Chicago Chicago, IL full score

alloy uses the same feedback cymbal setup as in my solo work it teaches us that it doesn’t exist, however this duo also includes an instrument that can produce multiphonics. During performance, the feedback cymbal’s audio is analyzed for chroma and in real-time compared to recordings of the instrumetalist’s multiphonics (that were recorded and analyzed earlier). The multiphonic most similar to the current cymbal timbre is displayed on a screen for the instrumentalist, who may choose to either play the displayed multiphonic or deviate from it, as the musical moment offers.

Created in collaboration with theater artist Charles Campbell of Skewed Visions. ​APPETITE uses the principle of feedback (audio, video, and cultural) to create environments that, while structured and intentional, are open, unpredictable, and greater than the elements used in their construction. The texts in APPETITE use Chris Marker’s influential 1962 sci-fi/experimental film, La Jetée as a starting point. Marker’s time-travel love-story film is almost entirely made up of a sequence of still images with voice-over narration.

commissioned by percussionist Jeremy Johnston it teaches us that it doesn’t exist creates an audio feedback loop by attaching a transducer to a suspended cymbal. The transducer agitates the cymbal with whatever audio signal is coming in through the microphone, which, when placed over the cymbal amplifies the sounds of the cymbal, agitating it further, creating a positive feedback loop. Moving the microphone over different parts of the cymbal and at different distances and angles creates different feedback tones and dynamics.

FEATHERMUCKER by Ted Moore featuring The Dream Songs Project with text by Timothy Otte text by Timothy Otte Commissioned by The Dream Songs Project Over the work’s 50 minute duration, Timothy Otte’s text sets a crumbled, post-apocalyptic world in which he describes the creative process of making idiosyncratic meaning where objective meaning cannot be found. Musically, FEATHERMUCKER is a combination of folk, experimental, and electronic music; cinematic sound fx; and sound art installation.

eclipse was commissioned by Skewed Visions, an experimental theater company in Minneapolis. The piece includes live audio processing using SuperCollider, as well as live visuals created with Processing. The visuals are controlled by the audio of the performer, giving the freedom to improvise within the structure specified by the composer, but keeping the visual and musical elements intimately connected through gesture.